Miniature optically pumped cesium standards

Two different types of optically pumped cesium frequency standards were designed, constructed, and tested. In the first, which uses saturated absorption spectroscopy, an effective beam of atoms is selected within a closed cell. The second standard uses a more traditional optically pumped cesium beam, but with a very short microwave cavity, and optical pumping using a transition at 852 nm. In a beam tube which is carefully designed to remove all known frequency shifts, any unknown systematic effects might be difficult to observe. The beam tube was fabricated with relatively low precision in the interest of time and cost, and in order to quickly identify any unanticipated frequency shifts associated with a small optically pumped device